The number of abortions in Estonia fell last year compared to 2012, dropping by 309 to 7,606.

Statistics Estonia told rus.err.ee on Saturday that the number of abortions has been in decline for 23 years - in 1991, there were 29,406 abortions.

Pregnancies were terminated by 13 girls under 15 and 573 abortion patients were aged 15-19. The largest share of abortions was made by women aged 25-29, and one patient was aged 50.

There were 42.5 abortions per birth in 2013 and 25.5 abortions per 1000 women aged 15-49.

In Estonia, terminations are allowed up to the end of the 11th week of pregnancy and in case of medical necessity up to the 21st week of pregnancy. State policy is aimed at reducing the number of abortions by reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies through increasing awareness of effective contraception.

Estonian e-Health strategy for 2020 foresees the development of cybermedicine, allowing doctors to consult and treat patients remotely. In the future, people may have sensors at home that transmit data straight to the computer of a medical specialist far far away.

Of the three people recently diagnosed with measles, one is a midwife in East-Tallinn Central Hospital (ITK) it has been revealed. 40 patients and staff who came into contact with the woman have been asked to attend a screening for the disease.

Two people who recently returned from a trip to Indionesia have been diagnosed with measles in Harju County. Both had only received one dose of the measles vaccine, which is not enough for total immunity.

The Tartu University Hospital Council announced that it will not yield to the plan of the Ministry of Social Affairs to cut its number of staff by 85. Quite the opposite, the expanding hospital is in need of more workers.

The Ministry of Social Affairs has presented the government with a new tobacco bill that sets tougher rules on the packaging and labelling of tobacco products. A key change is the inclusion of graphic warnings on the back of cigarette packets.

After the Chancellor or Justice said that a total ban on smoking in prisons violates personal freedom guaranteed by the constitution, Health and Labor Minister Rannar Vassiljev said the bill, planned to take effect in 2017, will go ahead.

“We can draw an imaginary line below Tallinn,” says Irja Lutsar, professor of medical microbiology at the University of Tartu. “Tallinn holds the highest number of HIV-positive individuals in Estonia.”

On March 27, the University of Tartu (UT) and AS Tere, one of Estonia's largest dairy processors, signed a ten-year extension to the exclusive licence agreement that allows Tere to continue using the Lactobacillus fermentum ME-3 bacterium discovered by the UT researchers in the production and marketing of dairy products in Estonia and twelve other European countries.

An international survey recently found that more than half of the people living in the three Baltic countries consider themselves overweight. ERR's science portal Novaator asked the National Institute of Health Development (TAI) if the reality is as grim as people's perceptions and if Estonia is indeed facing an obesity epidemic.

One of the five 2015 Avant-Garde Awards for HIV/AIDS Research from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which is part of the US National Institute of Health, has been given to a study co-authored by the researchers of the University of Tartu.

Kuulo Kutsar, an adviser at the Estonian Health Board, said the number of new cases of Ebola is far smaller than many international organizations predicted, the epidemic yet to be brought under control.

Authorities were forced to use a 100-meter passenger ferry to transport a critical patient from Hiiumaa to the mainland for an emergency operation during the night as all emergency helicopters were grounded due to bad weather.

With small-town pharmacies up in arms over what they see as encroachment by multinational chains, regulation of the sale of medicines is shaping up to be the biggest task for the last session of the 12th Estonian Parliament, which began on Monday.

A study conducted in 52 schools all over Estonia as part of Estonian Research Council's public health program TerVE revealed that Estonian children take more risks than their peers in many other European countries.

There were 290 new cases of HIV in Estonia diagnosed in 2014, according to the Estonian Health Board, which is a 11-percent decline in new cases (325) from the year before. However, the percentage of infected citizens to the size of the populace still makes Estonia's HIV rate one of the highest in Europe.